By: Travis Oke
Week one of my own version of Euro 2012. This one involves my family and I eating our way through Spain and France. We are in Malaga, an historic city on the Costa del Sol in Spain.
What is silly about this country is the price of wine. At the local grocery store – Mercadona – my brother found a Comportillo Rioja Gran Reserva 2005 for 8 Euro. This vintage year is rated a 97 by a certain Robert Parker Jr – but the vintage has still not reached its maturity date. That didn’t really concern me. I’m drinking any 2005 Gran Reserva for 8 Euro.
However, this is where the story gets crazy. My brother starts pulling out bottles and setting them on the ground – rooting to the back of the shelf and comes up with three bottles of the 1995 Gran Reserva. Same price. 1995 – another year rated 97 by RP Jr – that’s a loco deal.
Spain’s like that.
You can’t do stuff like that at the LCBO but if you want to live vicariously then Vintages always has Muga Rioja. Full bodied, dark and inky, this tastes like a hot dry summer – which is what the grapes get in la Rioja.
Travis Oke is a high school teacher by day and a wine writer by night. His blog, Pull The Cork, appears in the online edition of the Guelph Mercury.
